1S39.] Linnean Society. 27 



a number, j>erhaps about ten, of soft rather opake pulpy bodies, 

 which are evidently compounded of four closely connected parts so 

 placed on each other as to form a cone with a triangular base. 



April -2. 



The Lord Bishop of Norwich, President, in the Chair. 



Henry Bingley, Esq., Queen's Assay Master, Royal Mint ; Joseph 

 Dickinson, M.B., Lecturer on Botany at the Philosophical Institu- 

 tion, Liverpool : George Everett, Esq., Clapham ; and John Miers, 

 Esq., Chelsea, were elected Fellows of the Society. 



Mr. Owen read a Paper on a New Species of the genus Lepido- 

 siren of Fitzinger and Natterer. The author commenced by advert- 

 ing to the first announcement of that anomalous animal, the Lepido- 

 siren paradoxa, as the type of a new genus of Perenmbr3.nchiate 

 Reptiles by Fitzinger at the meeting of the German naturalists at 

 Prague in 1S37, and to its subsequent description by its discoverer 

 Dr. Natterer, the well-known South American traveller. 



With the generic characters assigned by these able German na- 

 turalists to their Lepidosiren, the species described by Mr. Owen 

 folly and closely agreed ; but it differed specifically in the greater 

 relative length of the head and nidimental extremities, and its much 

 smaller size. 



Mr. Owen observed, that since the time of the discovery of the 

 Ontithorlit/nchus there had not been submitted to naturalists a spe- 

 cies which proved more strongly the necessity of a knowledge of its 

 whole organization, both external and internal, in order to arrive at 

 a correct view of its real nature and affinities, than did the LepidosireA, 

 and as he had felt a reluctance to bring before the Society an in- 

 complete description, which might only have served to raise new 

 doubts in the minds of naturalists vi-ith regard to this animal, he had 

 deferred since June 1S37 the completion and communication of the 

 present paper. He had however at that time prepared a brief descrip- 

 tion of the specific characters of the specimen in question, under 

 the name of Protopterus, and. had referred it in the Catalogue of the 

 Museum of the CoUege of Surgeons to the Class of Fishes, on ac- 

 count of its scaly covering and the condition of its nostrils as plicated 

 sacs, and to the abdominal family of the Maiaeopterygian order 

 of that class, in which it seemed to present an extreme modification 



